Aliens

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Something's wrong in the town of Santa Mira, California. At first, Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) is unconcerned when the townsfolk accuse their loved ones of acting like emotionless imposters. But soon the evidence is overwhelming--Santa Mira has been invaded by alien "pods" that are capable of replicating humans and taking possession of their identities. It's up to McCarthy to spread the word of warning, battling the alien invasion at the risk of his own life. Considered one of the best science fiction films of the 1950s and '60s, this classic paranoid thriller was widely interpreted as a criticism of the McCarthy era (that's Senator Joseph, not actor Kevin), which was characterized by anticommunist witch-hunts and fear of the dreaded blacklist. Some hailed it as an attack on the oppressive power of government as Big Brother. However viewers interpret it, this original 1956 version of Invaders of the Body Snatchers (based on Jack Finney's serialized novel The Body Snatchers) remains a milestone movie in its genre, directed by Don Siegel with an inventive intensity that continues to pack an entertaining wallop. Look closely and you'll find future director Sam Peckinpah (an uncredited cowriter of this film) making a cameo appearance as a meter reader! The DVD release includes an interview with Kevin McCarthy, and for the first time on home video the film is presented in its original 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio. --Jeff Shannon

Plan 9 from Outer Space

Sometimes a movie achieves such legendary status that it can't quite live up to its reputation. Plan 9 from Outer Space is not one of these movies. It is just as magnificently terrible as you've heard. Plan 9 is the story of space aliens who try to conquer the Earth through resurrection of the dead. Psychic Criswell narrates ("Future events such as these will affect you in the future!") as police rush through the cemetery, occasionally clipping the cardboard tombstones in their zeal to find the source of the mysterious goings-on. More than just a bad film, Plan 9 is something of a one- stop clearinghouse for poor cinematic techniques: The time shifts whimsically from midnight to afternoon sun, Tor Johnson flails desperately in an attempt to rise from his coffin, and flying saucers zoom past on clearly visible strings. Fading star Bela Lugosi tragically died during filming, but such a small hurdle could not stop writer-producer-director Ed Wood. Lugosi is ingeniously replaced with a man who holds a cape across his face and might as well have "NOT BELA LUGOSI" stamped on his forehead. Plan 9 is so sweetly well- intentioned in both its message and its execution that it's impossible not to love it. And if you don't, well, as Eros says, "You people of Earth are idiots!" --Ali Davis

This is it! The most popular Atomic Age cult film of the twentieth century. Winner of two Golden Turkey Awards for Worst Picture and Worst Director of All Time, the immortal Edward D. Wood, Jr.! It's all here, the not-so-special effects, aliens in skating skirts zooming around in string-powered flying saucers to implement the ninth plan of Earth's conquest (the first eight failed) with an army of zombies (well, three actually), Vampira, Tor Johnson and Bela Lugosi in his legendary "postmortem" performance (with Ed's chiropractor standing in for Bela after his death). This truly original movie, Ed Wood's "Citizen Kane," is a hymn to all those who have ever tried to create something intelligent and meaningful, only to fail miserably every step of the way.

Robot Monster

Phil Tucker's Robot Monster has rightfully earned a place in the pantheon of bad movies over the years, and for good reason--it makes anything done by Ed Wood look like an Orson Welles masterpiece. Picture, if you will, a gorilla in a diving helmet (the Ro-Man) who wipes out all of the Earth's population except for one family (the Hu-Mans), whom he terrorizes through the rest of the film. From his headquarters in a Bronson Canyon cave, he communicates with his superiors via World War II surplus radio gear and a Lawrence Welk-style bubble machine, then shambles around the woods looking for his quarry. The plot of this post-holocaust sci-fi nonsense is hardly worth going into past that point, except to say that it's stupendously, staggeringly awful filmmaking. It's even more incredible when you consider that the writers and director undoubtedly believed that they were making a deep, serious, grave statement about the horrors of nuclear war... and wound up with several reels of celluloid flotsam. Any self-respecting fan of bad cinema who hasn't seen this notorious wreck of a movie isn't worth his or her salt. Poor Phil Tucker--when Robot Monster was released, it received such a thorough shellacking that he tried to commit suicide. Tucker failed, though, and went on to make the even less comprehensible Broadway Jungle and the marginally better Cape Canaveral Monsters. --Jerry Renshaw

Incredible! Unbelievable! Told the untamed way! Ro-Man, a sex-starved robot monster (dressed in gorilla suit and diving helmet), has destroyed all of humanity with the exception of a small band of survivors. It's up to these last brave souls to re-populate the human race and to destroy the mighty Ro-Man and his commander, The Great Guidance. A Golden Turkey Award winner!

Quatermass 2

Considered by many critics to be the finest in the series, Hammer's second Quatermass feature (adapted from the television serial by Nigel Kneale) is a subversive alien invasion story. Professor Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) stumbles onto a top-secret government base near a rural location that has been inundated by a steady stream of meteors. His investigations, which are met with distrust by suspicious townspeople and outright hostility by the base guards, uncover a conspiracy originating in the highest reaches of government. With few he can trust and fewer he can convince of his suspicions, Quatermass decides to meet the menace head-on. Director Val Guest, who cowrote the screenplay with Kneale, loads his film with fascinating detail (the whiz of the falling meteors--actually space pods--recalls the buzz bombs of the London blitz, and the antipathy of the high-strung locals adds a curious element of class conflict), but really brings the picture to life with its stark black-and-white look and overpowering mood of paranoia. The base, the very picture of industrial modernity in the midst of rural nothingness, is given a creepy emptiness as Quatermass wanders through, dwarfed in the giant maze of pipes and towers centered by enormous spherical containers and huge domes. You'll likely never forget the image of a government investigator covered in a smoking black substance, stumbling down the steps of the stark white container. --Sean Axmaker

Invaders from Mars

The cold-war paranoia of the McCarthy era had America in its grip when the original Invaders from Mars was released in 1953, and this atmospheric, highly influential science fiction film--the first of its kind to be filmed in color--was perfectly in tune with the mood of its time. Jimmy Hunt plays the quintessential American boy of the post-war years--a freckle-faced kid named David who's curious, alert, and possibly prone to elaborate flights of fancy. Then, during a midnight thunderstorm, he witnesses the landing of a flying saucer that buries itself underground in a nearby field. David's father (Leif Erickson) indulges his son's urging to investigate... and thus begins a bizarre and chilling story of alien invasion, with David's cries of "Martians!" falling on deaf ears as more and more adults are abducted, probed, and placed under alien control.

Designed and directed by William Cameron Menzies (one of the greatest production designers of Hollywood's golden age, whose credits include Gone with the Wind), this eerie little thriller benefits from Menzies's skill at combining physical settings with psychological undercurrents of paranoid terror and resistance against the alien threat. It's still most effective for younger viewers, with Jimmy Hunt providing the story's youthful point of view. And although the malevolent aliens look campy now, with a leader who resembles a bubble-brained squid in a fishbowl, Invaders from Mars remains one of the seminal science fiction films of its time, paving the way for The War of the Worlds and the rapidly developing trend of alien-invasion thrillers. --Jeff Shannon